


Getting to Know You (Again)

by Nochi



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:47:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3156392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nochi/pseuds/Nochi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Using a prompt table to write small, character-focused pieces to get me back in touch with the various worlds I've started to build and then dropped for whatever reason over the years. Mainly posting them here as a convenient way to keep them all together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Andy sat surrounded by books, dusty tomes stacked in towers around her, poring through one particularly thick specimen with her finger on the page, sounding out ancient words in a mishmash of Celtic and fae.

"Seachmall...dra...dry...okay, that one's 'magic', I know that one...so illusion magic...deacair - no shit it's _difficult_ , I knew that part..."

"Your eyes are gonna fall out." She startled upright, whipping around in her chair to see Peter leaning against the door frame.

"Shit, you scared me."

"Maybe if you didn't have your head buried in - " He lifted up the cover of the book open on the table. "'A Study of the Use of Glamour for Nefarious and Unsavory Purposes', you'd have heard me coming."

"Wait, you can read that? Why can you read that? If you've been holding out on me and letting me slog through this crap on my own - "

"Breathe, kid, I heard you ask the old man for it earlier." She glared at him anyway as he settled into a chair next to the old wooden table. "Come upstairs and eat."

"Later."

"It'll get cold."

"David's food doesn't get cold."

"Andy..." She looked up at him, cutting him off, desperation on her face.

"I have to figure this out, Peter. She _did_ something, she's always been stronger than we gave her credit for and she _did_ something. She didn't do it on my behalf, but that's what she'll tell everyone if she's caught out. Magic is intent plus willpower, even faerie magic, and it leaves its mark. I have to figure out how to pull her intent out of the magic still hanging around the Inn, and prove she was trying to...to _start_ something, before all of this blows up in my face."

Peter got out of his chair, kneeling next to Andy to look up at her. "And if anyone can do that, it's you." He took her face in his hands, brushing his thumbs under her eyes. "But you're not going to be any good to anyone if you keel over a 300-year-old book in David's basement. Come on. Come upstairs. Just for a little while."

Andy dropped her eyes, reaching up to take Peter's hands in her own. "Alright," she said quietly. "On one condition."

"Anything."

"Sit down here with me and write stuff down while I translate it. I can do it in my head, but having to stop to write it down keeps screwing me up."

He laughed and kissed her lightly, touching their foreheads together. "I am ever your humble secretary."

"You'd be hot in glasses."

"Upstairs, _boss_."


	2. Chapter 2

There were always questions, as the AI program was being developed, about if the AIs would gain true sentience or just run like a program in the back of the host's mind. If they would provide camaraderie or just quietly regulate Viro levels in the background.

They got their answer much sooner than they expected.

Rael died in his bassinet, and with the last spark of electrical activity in his brain the AI fled, hopped through wireless networks as though some escape pod routine had activated (one it had never been programmed with) and Kristoph took up residence in Nikolas' chip. The doctors were sure it would overheat, that Dae would die with his brother, but the codes settled in and around each other until they were almost indistinguishable.

But Nikolas, it seemed, was very protective of his charge. He was the dominant AI, keeping Kristoph locked behind firewalls and away from Dae's true mind. Every so often a dark thought would flicker across Dae's mind and Nikolas would chase it away, like swatting at a fly, doubling and tripling the protection around the code that meant _Kristoph_.

But his presence was undeniable. He was there, in every temper tantrum and crying fit, in every cruel, unthinking comment, in every calculated strike against people who had done him no wrong.

Kristoph had escaped to _live_ , and he would not be content to watch from the sidelines forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: I'm here  
> Story: Viro


	3. Chapter 3

"Are we really talking about this," Mara asked from the corner, knees pulled into her chest. They had managed to scrape together enough coin for a sleeper car, but it was really only supposed to seat two. 

"Why not?" Elijah's hand was the only thing visible as he gestured over the edge of the top bunk. "We're headed to a funeral, it seemed like the logical discussion topic."

"It's just...it's _morbid_ , is all." 

"The magic involved in the Rosan ceremonies is fascinating," Micah said from the floor, his head tipped back against the wall. "They burn their dead, you know, and they paint spirals onto the body so that there's no actual flame. Given that most of that region is urban, it's almost a necessity, since the ceremonial space needed is actually very small."

"See? A nice, frank, academic discussion. No need to get the shivers over it, Mar."

"Burnings always creeped me out," Mara admitted under her breath. "The Dedicates made all of us be there, especially if the people had no family to attend. There had to be someone there to witness it, they said, since nothing was left afterwards."

"That's right, you basically grew up in the basement of a church," Micah said. "Do you prefer the Hidrati rites?"

She shrugged. "I don't think it's a matter of _preference_. Funerals are always sad, they're always stressful, and nobody ever _wants_ them to happen." She paused. "Though yes, the idea of all those bodies at the bottom of the mountain lakes...it's a little disconcerting."

"The Abanhlaba bury their dead," Micah said. "But they've got all that land dedicated to them, so they don't have to worry about space so much." Mara looked mildly horrified at this idea.

"That's worse than the lakes," she said firmly. "Especially now."

"The corruption will have to cross an entire sea to get to Aban lands," Elijah said soothingly. "If it can even survive that much water."

" _Still_. Just the thought of all those bodies, just...sitting _under the ground_..." she shuddered.

"The Cahari celebrate death," Susanna said quietly from the bottom bunk. "They believe the souls of the dead are reunited in the hands of the Divider, and they leave the bodies in the highest places they can find, so that nothing will impede them on their journey there."

"...I just pictured a dead body tied to the top of a tree," Elijah admitted after a long silence. 

"When necessary, yes." There was a thin thread of amusement in Susanna's voice.

"Wait, are you Cahari?" Micah asked suddenly. "I mean, your dad - "

"The Cahari are the only ones who don't believe we're all doomed to fight amongst each other until the world caves in," she interrupted. "I don't have to live in an Enlightened Temple to find that preferable to constant sermons about drowning."

"Or the constant threat of immolation via your own sinful thoughts," Mara muttered. 

"Wait, _what_?"

"Oh yeah, the Rosan belief is that impure thoughts cause the brain to catch fire. You know, to purify itself."

"That's horrifying."

"They all live in volcanoes," Elijah pointed out. "SOMETHING was gonna burn them to death; they may as well have some fun on the way out." 

A pause, and then laughter filled the small cabin. They needed high spirits, they needed laughter and learning. 

After all, they were headed to a funeral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Funeral  
> Story: Spiritfade


	4. Chapter 4

Lyssa sat in the corner of the room, arms crossed, watching Andy study. This had been her job since the party had come to the Doghouse, was to guard Andy and help her translate things as necessary. It was mostly silent in the little room, until Lyssa leaned forward and spoke.

"All right, I'll bite."

"I certainly hope not; not unless you've got some silver handy." Andy's voice was dry, with a clear thread of irritation from being interrupted.

"Oh, shut up." Lyssa waved a hand in the air. "Why does Peter call you 'kid'? He's not that much older than you, and you're clearly...dating." She amended her statement at the look Andy gave her. "It seems weird."

Andy sat back, stretching in her chair. "It's from when we first met," she said, grunting a little as her spine popped. "He got bitten as a kid, you know, and Dallas brought him to us for his first change. I said it was because he was a kid and he got mad at me. You know, at 12 that two-year difference makes you feel ten feet tall."

"...you tried to comfort a werewolf the night of their first change?" Lyssa sounded both awed by the act and stunned by its foolishness. Andy chuckled a little, stretching her arms out in front of her.

"He was scared - crying, though he'll still deny it if you bring it up. He'd been completely mundane before he got attacked. I stayed with him that whole week, and brought him candy for breakfast the morning after."

"I wish like hell you'd been at my first change," Lyssa said fervently. "You two have really known each other for ten years?"

"You sound surprised."

She shrugged. "Packs have to move around a lot. Too much scrutiny in one town, a death...we don't tend to put down roots."

"Yeah, we run a kind of halfway house for wolves that needed to move out in a hurry." Andy frowned at her book. "We have to get a more permanent solution set up."

"One problem at a time, chief." Lyssa sat back in her chair, tipping her head back. "I'm done pestering you about your childhood romance with the boss."

"You might even call it - "

"No. No you might not." Lyssa lifted a threatening finger in the air without looking up. Andy's grin was, somewhat appropriately, a little wolfish.


	5. Chapter 5

At first he didn't take the gloves off much. He knew what they made him look like, _who_ they made him look like, but it beat seeing that cold steel in place of flesh. 

He tried to get back to his work. Which mainly consisted of remembering what his work had BEEN. From the moment he'd seen the book, realized what it was, it had consumed everything. Literally, at this point. And with what he had seen swirling through his mind, most of his old projects seemed kind of pointless. There was a weather machine he figured wasn't a totally lost cause, and he pulled it out of the back of the lab to see what he could do with it.

"MotherFUCK." He bit down on the rest of the string of swears that threatened to follow the first, opting instead to sigh and pick up the wrench he had dropped for the fifth time in a half-hour.

"Problem?" Wanting was in a nearby corner, sorting through pieces of tech and categorizing them. If he had a system, Insano had yet to figure it out, and he hadn't asked. It still made him uneasy to look at the homunculus, the spitting image of himself but with something just slightly.... _wrong_.

But with his head halfway in the machine's workings, he could shout across the lab easily enough. He was at least used to people who _sounded_ like him. "These stupid useless hands of yours can't hold a fucking wrench."

"I can always take them back. Could probably get more use out of them than you."

"If they can't hold a wrench I doubt they'll be able to find your dick," Insano shot back. "You want a new sex toy, make your own."

"Does it ever occur to you that I am literally your genetic duplicate?" Wanting sounded bored, but there was a thread of humor in it, too. "You'd think with as many clones as you have floating around - "

"There's one," Insano snapped, "and the dick part is kind of optional there." Talking about her made him think about her, and he shoved the image away with what was becoming regular practice. "Nice dodge on claiming your shitty workmanship, by the way."

"You're not supposed to use them with the gloves." Exasperation, now. "They're part of you now, they're not going anywhere, get the fuck used to them. Or better yet, actually talk to some of the people in your life that deal with this as part of _their_ lives already, and get them to help you. But don't blame me because you're being a pansyass, and don't bitch when it affects your work."

Wanting stomped off, and Insano heard the stairwell door slam. He almost yelled after him, told him not to go upstairs, but held his tongue in the end. Spoony saw enough weird shit, what was one more?

Ten minutes later, after dropping the wrench three more times, he ripped the gloves off and threw them across the room. And there they were. Long, tapered fingers, gleaming steel, like an extremely well-articulated suit of armor. His eyes focused on the thumb joint, where it connected to the rest of the hand, peering through the gap in the metal at the wires and gears beneath. He never could have designed this, even his arrogance bowed to that. This was something from another world, this - this was _hyperspace_ bullshit. 

(Everyone assured him he had once been the leading authority on hyperspace bullshit, which was largely why they couldn't explain it to him in a way that made any fucking sense, and whenever Rinbot tried her eyes started glowing and she had to sit by herself in a dark room for a while.)

Carefully, he picked the wrench back up. Reached towards the bolt he'd been trying to tighten this entire time.

His fingers tightened perfectly around the handle, and before long the bolt was snug against the base.

He decided he would never speak to Wanting again, it was the only way to avoid embarrassment.

But when Wanting came back downstairs some half-hour later, he had a circuit panel in front of him and was swearing as snow landed on the places he was trying to solder, as the machine quietly produced flurries in the middle of the lab. Wanting didn't say a word, just quietly used a standing frame and a fire blanket to build a canopy over Insano before heading to his room in the back of the lab.


End file.
